Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

IBM READIES UNIFIED STORAGE MESSAGE AIMED AT EMC
by William Fellows for the451.com

IBM is working up a new unified position and message for its storage strategy, which it hopes will reconcile those currently offered discretely by its storage hardware, software and Tivoli divisions. The new approach will be focused on adherence to SNIA standards, and is clearly aimed at EMC. It will get an airing at a forthcoming press conference that will detail the latest developments in IBM's storage virtualization and partner strategy.

IMPACT ASSESSMENT

The message

IBM believes that with a product strategy in order it's now ready to take the game to EMC with a message that unifies its divergent current approaches around SNIA standards. It will deliver the new positioning at a forthcoming storage virtualization announcement.

Competitive landscape

IBM is pitching the new strategic thinking directly against EMC and its storage partner Dell. Sun is still something of a wild card (but is nevertheless an HDS OEM), but with HDS and HP now supporting it, IBM is building a very credible axis of power.

The451 assessment

If IBM can deliver the same kind of standards-driven strategic positioning as the initiative it has forged on Linux and grid computing -­ and keep its current partners on board ­- it poses a material threat to EMC and its ambitions. IBM will need to execute on its virtualization strategy to retain credibility; success or failure here will reflect right across its storage strategy.

Context

IBM doesn't believe it is executing on its message or strategic thinking in storage as well as it could ­- which is precisely what we have been saying for months. "We are working out our positioning. Our marketing is not as easy to understand as it could be, and we tend to complicate it," admits Dietmar Wendt, vice president of the storage systems group for the EMEA region.

But with the product and partner strategies in better shape ­- and the confidence to admit its shortfalls ­- IBM is now able to take stock and develop a consistent message and position without it appearing hollow or lacking in substance.

StorageTank is finally heading for production under Mike Zisman, Tivoli is overhauling its Byzantine product mix and addressing storage management, and the hardware group is pushing the envelope with products such as the iSCSI TotalStorage 2000. On partnerships, IBM is exchanging APIs with Hitachi Data Systems and Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, has effectively turned its hard disk business over to Hitachi (Sharks and Lightning will use the same drives) and has agreed to work on a joint approach to virtualization and standardization as part of the deal.

Strategy

The target of this renewed focus is clearly EMC -­ although IBM denies it -­ and the move that would seem most consistent with IBM's other strategic positioning is to play the standards card, possibly EMC's weakest spot. Although it currently sounds half-formed, we expect that IBM will use a forthcoming press conference on storage virtualization to detail what's available now and what can be expected, and how it all dovetails with SNIA standards.

Indeed, storage software general manager Mike Zisman is currently on a customer road show touting not only IBM's virtualization story but also this new positioning.

IBM's idea is to get beyond the debates over frameworks ­- such as EMC's WideSky or HDS's TrueNorth ­- to virtualization. Another of EMC's weak spots is that it regards virtualization as just one task in the overall challenge of automating storage within its AutoIS program.

With Hitachi OEM HP on board, too, IBM is beginning to look like a credible rival to the virtual company EMC and Dell have created in storage. Indeed, if Sun Microsystems were to join the party ­- and there are "no barriers" to this, according to IBM ­- it would see a veritable axis of storage powers pitted against another, splitting the industry down the middle.

Technology

IBM's forthcoming virtualization announcement will focus on the details of its two-pronged strategy -­ StorageTank and Lodestone -­ which are due by the end of Q1 2003. IBM plans to use a Lintel server-based, in-band virtualization engine for the aggregation of block data and StorageTank for file aggregation. (It says it will continue to sell Datacore SANsymphony). The announcement will inevitably involve HDS to a greater or lesser degree, as the two agreed to cooperate on virtualization as part of their disk business deal, and said that IBM would take the lead technical role.

IBM is also working to finish up a new software layer for Shark, code-named Control Center, which is an extension of its Storage Expert (StorX) software. The company says it will be able to control the physical status of IBM and third-party arrays. Control Center is the name EMC sells storage management software under. IBM will obviously market the product under another name, but the positioning couldn't be more explicit.

In other developments, IBM admits that its iSCSI TotalStorage 2000 device was developed and marketed with the express intention of testing the waters for iSCSI and IP networking readiness (and the company furthermore denies it's been withdrawn from sale). It says it will now work to add the class of failover, redundancy and availability features it claims potential customers had asked for in such a product.

Courtesy the451.com