It's the time of the year where we all write our "year in review" posts, as well as our "looking ahead to 2010" prognostications. This year, I'm going to focus on EMC-related news.
Why? It's been an exceptionally busy year for all of us. And, to a certain extent, what happens at EMC emblematic of the rapid pace of change and evolution across our industry.
Why? It's been an exceptionally busy year for all of us. And, to a certain extent, what happens at EMC emblematic of the rapid pace of change and evolution across our industry.
Ready for a whirlwind tour of 2009?
If you follow EMC, see how many of these stories you remember ...
Fortune Names EMC The Only Technology Company Among World’s 10 Most Admired Companies for Product and Service Quality
EMC's approach to TCE -- total customer experience -- is one of the many great untold stories here. Hopefully, I'll find time to sit down with the people involved, and give you a tour of how it's changed everything we do here.
CRO Magazine Ranks EMC Among Its 100 Best Corporate Citizens List
EMC takes its corporate responsibility very seriously, and -- occasionally -- we get the pleasure of a bit of recognition.
EMC and Microsoft Extend Strategic Alliance Through 2011 to Deliver Efficient Information Infrastructures and Empower Workers
EMC and Microsoft renew their vows for another 3 years -- for more background, see here.
EMC Has Highest Percentage of Networked Storage in Virtual Server Environments, According to New Survey From Leading Independent Analyst Firm
This one wasn't surprising to me, after all -- EMC has the highest percentage of networked storage, period -- at least, according to IDC. Unfortunately, one of our competitors was attempting to position themselves as the "leader" in this category, and -- well -- hard facts were to the contrary.
New EMC Celerra Unified Storage Systems with Deduplication Top Industry Offerings; Up to 22 Percent Lower TCO
Dedupe becomes a standard feature of NAS filers. EMC used a different approach than NetApp, moving the debate from "who was first" to "who is better".
EMC Breaks The $2,000 Barrier With New Iomega Rackmount NAS
In our market, disruption can come from beneath, which is why I find Iomega's increasing NAS capabilities so fascinating.
EMC SourceOne Delivers Integrated Information Governance with New Solutions for Archiving, e-Discovery and Compliance
More than a brand-spanking-new email archiving environment, SourceOne was EMC's new platform for managing many forms of information.
New EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture Delivers Massive Storage Scalability for Virtual Data Centers
Ah yes, the V-Max announcement. Industry pundits sang its praises. Customers loved it, and voted with their budget. However, competitors hated it -- and still do!
EMC Announces Acquisition of Configuresoft, Leading Provider of Server Configuration, Change and Compliance Management Software
EMC continues to transform itself into a major resource management player -- betting big on the transition to a virtual world.
EMC World 2009 Kicks Off with Joe Tucci and Paul Maritz Keynotes on Future of Enterprise Cloud Computing
Even though the economy was down, you wouldn't have seen any signs of that at EMC World. One of the best events in the industry, period.
New Survey From Leading Industry Analyst Firm Shows EMC's IT Management Customers Among Most Satisfied in Industry
People like EMC's Ionix tools (formerly Smarts). The tools are extremely powerful, go in relatively easily, and do what they say they do. It's nice to pleasantly surprise people that way ...
EMC Authors Definitive Reference Book on Information Storage Technology
You'd think we would have done this a long time ago ... but we hadn't. Now you can read the Big Storage Book from EMC. I wonder how long before we have to do a rewrite? It's changing that fast ...
EMC Proposes to Acquire Data Domain for $30.00 Per Share in Cash
High drama in the storage biz: EMC vs. NetApp for a key acquisition. EMC wins, and ends up owning most of the dedupe backup market. If it wasn't for VMware, DD would probably take EMC's prize for "most successful acquisition" already.
New EMC Ionix Family Ushers in Next Generation of IT Management
EMC Acquires FastScale Technology, Optimizes Application Image Management to Dramatically Increase Performance and Scalability of Private Clouds
Over the last few years, EMC has invested over $1B in creating a next-generation resource management portfolio. The resulting integrated environment, EMC Ionix, was formally announced this year. And, at the same time, we kept extending its capabilities, this time through the acquisition of a fascinating technology that images and dynamically reassembles runtime applications and images.
EMC Leaders Mourn Passing of Co-Founder Dick Egan, the ‘E’ in EMC
Dick Egan was the driving force behind EMC in the early days. We all respected him, we all loved him, and we're all missing him.
EMC to Acquire Kazeon Systems, Inc.
E-discovery is one of those use cases for information that we're seriously interested in, hence our interest in acquiring this industry leader.
New EMC Solutions Extend Customer Value of Microsoft SharePoint Server
Microsoft's SharePoint has joined the list of big enterprise applications, so we're doing more than ever with this environment, including all sorts of nice integration with EMC Documentum.
New EMC Centera Virtual Archive Raises the Bar in Digital Archive Management and Scale
Centera continues to be a key platform for EMC. Every year, enterprises generate more information that has to be managed, ideally via a digital archive, and Centera continues to be the platform of choice for many of our customers.
Cisco and EMC, Together with VMware, Form Coalition to Accelerate Pervasive Virtualization and Private Cloud Infrastructures
The VCE announcement, together with Vblocks and Acadia, represented a seismic shift in the IT infrastructure marketplace. Most everyone has had to respond in one regard or another.
EMC FAST Technology Represents New Era in Storage and Information Management
The collective competition is trying to make the case that FAST v1 is no big deal. Trust me, for our customers, FAST v1 is a big deal, and they're extremely anxious to implement this sooner than later. These same competitors tried to convince all of us that EMC's announcement of enterprise flash drives was no big deal, either.
--------------------
Quite a year, no?
And these are just the highlights in an economically challenging year.
(note: since I posted this, I've been deluged with EMC followers -- internal and external -- writing me saying "how could I forget about XYZ?" I'm sorry if I left something important out, so feel free to add more events of note in the comments section if you'd like. Thanks!)
Joe Tucci was quite clear that he wasn't going to back down on R+D investment, so -- rest assured -- next year's version of this recap will have plenty of juicy announcements as well!
Happy holidays to everyone!
Chuck, VMAX was a big announcement for EMC in 2009. would you share your thoughts on the choice of Intel products as key components in VMAX? Why Intel and what benefits will we derive from the use of Intel Processors in terms of future functionality, etc? thanks, carl
Posted by: carl vorder bruegge | December 14, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Hi Carl
(Full disclosure -- Carl is an EMC employee.)
I can't share everything, but the tactical list would look like:
* now we have a common processor architecture across all of EMC's storage platforms.
* reduces hardware engineering and mfg costs to a certain degree.
* software components are now somewhat easier to re-use.
From a strategic perspective, we now are locked into the benefits of Intel's high-end processor roadmap (more cores, more performance, more efficient, lower cost), and -- might I point out -- the Intel processors are fully virtualizable.
Which brings up some interesting possibilities, if you think about it ...
-- Chuck
Posted by: Chuck Hollis | December 14, 2009 at 11:44 AM