sure it's faster
but at what cost?
A few years ago I was joking with my then manager about how EMC likes to come in and "buy" business by engaging at the executive level, one of the reasons I have not bought from EMC (though it seems recently they are working to change that image and I see positive results - may be an Isilon customer soon).
Anyway, maybe it was barely a WEEK later and I am in a meeting with some people along with our then-CIO, and someone comes in with two boxes. In them were two dozen premium cupcakes from EMC. They wanted to meet. My boss joked "why didn't they just buy him(CIO) a @# car" (we were/are a 3PAR customer). Maybe 2 years later had a more direct conversation with the person at EMC that sent the cupcakes. Seemed like nice people, and really appreciated their new approach, their attitude was they weren't going to try to end run around me, if their solution isn't a good fit and we are happy with what we have, that's great. Let them know if that changes. No high pressure shit, none of the "old EMC" that so many people are familiar with, and it is that "old EMC" that these and other newer EMC staffers have told me they are trying so hard to wipe that image because almost every customer they go to feels the same way.
CIO asked if we need storage I said no not really, but said I am fine to meet with them. I expected EMC themselves to show up but a reseller did instead.
They weren't prepared to deal with me. It was funny. In the end they actually shifted to try to sell us Hitachi storage instead of EMC which got me confused as until that point I thought they were EMC. They said they could sell us an array that had 1 TERABYTE of cache in it(i.e. Hitachi VSP), so much faster than our tiny little 3PAR array. I laughed, they said this with straight faces too, we obviously don't have the budget for that kind of system. They later walked out with their tail between their legs and haven't heard from them since. It was a somewhat enjoyable conversation though as I rarely get to talk about storage to someone in person who even has a vague idea of what I am talking about. Maybe a couple times a year (yeah I don't get out much). Same goes for networking.
But I thought of that experience when I read the comment on how Infinidat's storage is faster than all SSD platforms. Don't doubt that for a minute for many workloads especially ones that fit in the cache.
I have no doubt their storage platform is a really good platform for the target market (tells you a lot if they are supporting mainframe connectivity), and I'm sure really good for many other workloads though also confident the price premium is hefty too, given the high availability probably well deserved premium for the niche of apps that really need that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
