IBM is looking to grow in the storage virtualization arms race and plans to launch its strategy in storage rival EMC’s backyard.
In a Wednesday event titled, “Virtualization Everywhere,” IBM storage head Andy Monshaw and his colleagues plan to “showcase the world’s most advanced
virtualization technologies,” according to an IBM spokesperson.
IBM demonstrated virtualization products from its research labs at
a similar event in Cambridge last year. But the company refused to
disclose more details ahead of this year’s event other than to say it plans to unveil its offense against EMC in storage virtualization, as well as outline how storage virtualization fits into IBM’s complete systems and technology virtualization strategy.
The words are as bold as the Armonk, N.Y., company’s actions. Cambridge,
Mass., is roughly 30 miles from EMC’s headquarters in Hopkinton, Mass.,
putting the event squarely in EMC’s backyard.
But analysts said IBM has a valid point. Though it bought server
virtualization stalwart VMware, EMC does not yet have a comprehensive
product for storage virtualization, which allows pools of data to be managed
as though it is one large source, in the market.
Big Blue has had two such key products, San Volume Controller (SVC) and San
File System (SFS), for a few years. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), the third
high-end storage vendor, released its TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform
late last year.
EMC is planning to produce its Storage Router virtualization product in the
second quarter.
Joe Clabby, an analyst with Summit Strategies, said he imagines IBM will tell the media EMC is leaving customers hanging with regard to storage
virtualization, noting that EMC’s virtualization work pales in comparison.
“EMC has got VMware, which is for X86-based systems only, and then some
virtualization on Centera,” Clabby said in a recent interview.
“And they’ve got a plan to push storage virtualization out to the network like IBM has already done with Cisco by putting SVC on Cisco routers.”
“IT buyers don’t want to buy a storage management package, and then have to
buy a separate server management package, and they don’t want to be
restricted to x86 architecture,” Clabby continued. “And they want to make
all of their heterogeneous storage look like one logical storage block. And
EMC doesn’t do that yet. EMC kills them in ILM but from a virtualization
Perspective, EMC’s sucking wind.”
Clabby and Pund-IT Research analyst Charles King said
attendees can expect a cohesive server storage management story from IBM.
“This may be the last time IBM will be able to claim EMC has no
virtualization solution,” King said in an interview. “I think IBM’s pitch
will be that ‘whole systems’ virtualization offers significant advantages
over storage-specific solutions. Then again, that’s the argument you’d
expect a systems vendor to make against storage specialists.”
“IBM’s storage virtualization solutions have had a free run of it up until
the last three or four months,” King continued. “Now that its two biggest
storage competitors are hitting the street with their own stuff, it seems
the company is shifting a bit and saying, ‘You don’t need a storage
virtualization solution; what you need is a full systems virtualization.'”
Mark Lewis, an EMC executive vice president who is responsible for bringing the
highly anticipated Storage Router to market, said IBM can take its best shot,
because EMC is on task and on schedule with the Storage Router.
Storage Router is different from IBM’s SVC and HDS’ TagmaStore, because it
simply routes the data, rather than holds the data within the network, Lewis
explained.
“By doing that, we effectively create a system that, for all of the use cases
we’ve described, users don’t break anything they currently have,” Lewis
said.
Lewis continued: “We’re trying to create a completely open environment for
virtualization, which means A, doing it in software so it can work across
all of the switch suppliers, such as Brocade and McData. And B, doing it in
a way that doesn’t disrupt the existing functionality. By storing data, SVC
and TagmaStore corrupt the environment in which they’re trying to get
installed.”
To wit, Lewis said that if what IBM and HDS do is considered true
virtualization, Storage Router shouldn’t be considered as such because it is
so different.
“We’re not late to market,” Lewis said. “We’ll be first to market with the right
solution.”