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July 31, 2007

Comments

Geoff Mitchell

You mentioned big server vendors HP, IBM and Sun, but you neglected to mention one very important one. How about Dell - they are the #1 vendor for industry standard servers in the USA and EMC has a very strong OEM and reseller relationship with them. Where do you feel they fit in your thoughts?

Chuck Hollis

Ahhh .. I thought that question would be coming.

Yes, we work very well with Dell, and FSC, and Unisys, and NEC, and a few others.

I know this is going to sound a little soapy, but -- in each of these cases -- I think that the products are clearly identified as EMC products, and much of the extended EMC value proposition comes through: qual, support, consulting, services, integration, etc.

Simply put, the customer knows what they're buying.

I tend to think of this sort of relationship as different than a standard OEM arrangement where the server company tries to convince the market that the product is their own through naming or branding (insert lots of examples here).

That being said, I think that all of these relationships are win-win, in that each company benefits, and -- ultimately -- the customer does as well.

Thoughts?

Nigel Poulton

Chuck,

I couldn't agree more on this one (evidence here - http://blogs.rupturedmonkey.com/?p=77) ;-)

As storage gets more and more important I see an increasing market for best of breed/specialists.

Game on.

Chuck Hollis

Game on!

Fred San

Large scale storage is always going to be better bet from a specialist like EMC. But an interesting twister coming your way is VmWare running on massive servers with direct attached storage in share-nothing clusters.

Chuck Hollis

Hi Fred-san:

Share-nothing clusters have been around in one form or another for more than a decade, and if VMware decides to go there, it'll be yet another variant.

The computing problems they tackle well are interesting, but rather limited in scope from a market perspective, and -- up to now -- haven't made much of a dent in the storage market.

I posted on this a while back (see "Seduced By Scale Out").

Every year it seems some part of the IT landscape gets seduced by the idea some flavor of scale out. Some people think it's gonna change everything.

And, so far, it hasn't ...

The comments to this entry are closed.

Chuck Hollis


  • Chuck Hollis
    SVP, Oracle Converged Infrastructure Systems
    @chuckhollis

    Chuck now works for Oracle, and is now deeply embroiled in IT infrastructure.

    Previously, he was with VMware for 2 years, and EMC for 18 years before that, most of them great.

    He enjoys speaking to customer and industry audiences about a variety of technology topics, and -- of course -- enjoys blogging.

    Chuck lives in Vero Beach, FL with his wife and four dogs when he's not traveling. In his spare time, Chuck is working on his second career as an aging rock musician.

    Warning: do not ever buy him a drink when there is a piano nearby.

    Note: these are my personal views, and aren't reviewed or approved by my employer.
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