Traditional storage
"It will be interesting to see how Dell can ignite momentum in traditional storage in fiscal 2019."
Spoiler alert: they can't. Traditional storage is dead; it's all-flash, all the way.
Dell had a reasonable fourth 2018 quarter in all areas but one – storage. Yes, EMC let the house down with an 11 per cent drop in revenues year-on-year. Total Dell Technology revenues were $21.94bn in the quarter, a 9 per cent rise on the year. Net income was -$533m, a big improvement on the year-ago -$1.4bn. …
I'd put all flash in the traditional storage bucket. I'm assuming el reg means more along the lines of traditional storage systems whether it is EMC's flash offerings, Isilon, Compellent, Equallogic. Whether they have disk, or flash, or whatever.
And as other articles have pointed out, disk isn't going to go away slowly, not as long as the cost of flash is as high as it is.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/28/crossover_ssd_dollars_exceeded_disk_drive_dollars_in_2017/
Last I heard even tape is continuing to ship record exabytes year after year.
There's also the issue where several types of data(media especially of course) do not dedupe or compress well(or at all).
What was that about a rising tide floats all ships?? Given we're seeing growth from pretty much everyone else, this is a really poor result from Dell EMC. Where's the innovation from them. Seeing nothing coming from them and I'd guess their debt position means they're not in a position to acquire. Pure, HPE and NetApp can surely smell blood in the water.
Dell/EMC (or really EMC) has a number of issues:
1. Credibility - the "charge customers a fortune or refresh" cycle doesn't work any more and is even less relevant with flash.
2. Innovation - The company moved forward in innovation by acquisition. Dell/EMC has had a trail of missteps in products/companies they've purchased and they don't have the money these days.
3. Competition - the competition is simply better at marketing and selling than Dell/EMC are. Dell/EMC also has internal competition from their own asset, like VMware with Virtual SAN.
All of these things are going to be hard to change.
Hey Chris,
I actually disagree with you on #3. I think EMC (Not Dell/EMC) reps are some of the best around. They also have an absolute beast of a marketing machine.
Their issue is the majority of their products are absolute crap. Isilon WAS great for very specific workloads and has recently gone down hill dramatically. ScaleIO doesnt have a single enterprise feature. VMAX is great for very specific workloads and has had a tough time moving to all flash.....dont even get me started on the Xtremio debacle. Remember how hard they were pushing that piece of garbage? They pushed it so hard for a year and then its almost like it completely vanished from the portfolio after they had so many issues with it.
Not just VMWare/VSAN. Others are up in external storage, see 3rd quarter results from IDC here: https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43274017. What we've seen is their heritage VMAX/VNX/Unity segment is being punished... you can further ferret that info here and there. Notice in 3Q17 Netapp and Others are up quite a bit in External Storage. I expect continued growth in Others. Ponder why that might be and why you might see a bunch of drag on heritage for a number of players.
No one is denying that NetApp and others are growing. Also there is definitely decline in VMAX and XtremIO. But ponder this:
VSAN/VxRail teams are cannibalizing Unity by snatching up VNX refreshes. NetApp does not have this problem yet but might once SolidFire HCI starts replacing FAS.
As of time of that IDC report, HPE hadn't pushed SimpliVity into their 3Par, EVA, Nimble, and MSA base yet but I am hearing changes in compensation structure are driving such behavior.
I agree in all points except we will see continued growth in others. I am convinced we will see the same erosion EMC is being in other vendors installed base because of lower revenue HCI solutions replacing legacy SAN/NAS.
This. Dell HCI is mopping up in the SME array business for VNX etc.
The high end VMAX monoliths are more challenged, with little new logo business for EMC (zero in the CKD mainframe heartland), and a near-total reliance on the upgrade marketing engines for existing users.
All flash IS the new traditional array, with chip prices tumbling.