Dell EMC canning XtremIO file services project Dell EMC is halting development of file services on its XtremIO all-flash block access array. According to Sam Grocott, SVP for product marketing in the Storage and Data Protection division, Dell’s customers said they didn’t need another system supplying file services from Dell EMC, as they were already well served with file …
Hmmm, somehow I'm missing some products in the Flash Array Chart:
Where's the NetApp AFF systems? They've been around since June 2014... Supposedly they contribute the most to NetApp's Flash run rate of about $1.4 Billion (earnings call Feb-17). The A-Series is just a new name to the AFF...
Where's the NetApp EF systems? I don't know for sure, but I would have estimated them to be above SolidFire...
Anyway, adding the NetApp systems leaves me way below $1.4 Bio. Something's amiss...
Disclosure NetApp Employee.
What people choose to include in their "Flash Optimised Array" definition is pretty debatable, the graph shows the new 8200 based A-Series controller data (which were only just released, hence the relatively small numbers) for NetApp, but doesnt show the 8000 series based AFF controller data. If you're familiar with the underlying tech for both of these you'd have to wonder .. hey wait .. what ? How can you count one, but not the other ? .. but industry analysts have their own viewpoints on what qualifies in vs out and by the same reasoning the EF series don't count for some because they weren't "built from the ground up", likewise you don't see the all flash VMAX numbers, or the all flash 3PAR numbers either.
The whole "built from the ground up" argument was always based more on marketing than actual technology .. if you're interested in a humorous (but technically interesting) take on this check out Dave Wright's presentation from tech field day here ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35KNCOYguBU .."Coming Clean: The Lies That Flash Storage Companies Tell"
XtremeIO got a good chunk of their marketshare by aggressively disrupting their own VMAX sales, which was both brave, and brilliantly executed. Having said that if you look at the numbers, since the all flash VMAX came out, the XtremeIO numbers have dropped correspondingly, so it looks like DMC was quite happy to disrupt their XtremeIO sales by rolling VMAX back in, I guess its a great time to be in the forklift business :-)
Those chart just demonstrate how large companies skew sale numbers of a specific product to fit their need.
ExtremeIO was heralded as the fast growing product in EMC history. This was of course a complete lie.
They would sell an ExtremeIO array for full price and throw in a VMAX for free.
I spent some time at IBM where they would freely move storage array revenue numbers from hardware to software just to fit their marketing message
I wonder when will journalists and analysts just stop publishing vendor-supplied sales numbers and just rely on customer information. It's a lot more work, but otherwise it's just fake news.
You wrote:
"Last month the company stopped work on its DSSD array."
Different story. DSSD was very expensive and rather esoteric: multimillion-range IOPS in a small box is not a mass market requirement hence it's shuttering as a standalone product, I think.
"File services will be strengthened on Unity, Isilon, the SC series and VMax but XtremIO will stand outside this file-serving quartet as a best-of-breed block access array."
It sounds like a smart decision to focus on upcoming new generations of existing file product lines eg NVMe-based Isilon Nitro etc, with much-much larger existing markets and keep XtremeIO focused on its core block features... wonder what's coming to EQL?
PS: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/12/emc_sees_nvme_adoption_taking_off_next_year/ - you should ask this guy again now...
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