EMC WORLD: DAY 2 RECAP

EMC World, in its 2nd day in Las Vegas, is by and for engineers. While there are more suits present than in previous years, nevertheless most of the presenters are usually not polished marketing presenters but often the software developer who wrote the code for the product. This provides a level of unparalleled access for attendees.

I had lunch with a SAN Administrator for a state government office and we discussed data replication at a pretty deep level. This gentleman was a heavy user of the technology and was particularly impressed with EMC’s RecoverPoint technology. I asked if he found the price-point to be prohibitive. He assured me that it was quite attractive: the price had dropped since the product was initially released, and it offered so many features and such great capabilities that it eliminated the need for spending money on lots of other technologies. He found it to be ideal in a VMware environment and was excellent in the event he needed disaster recovery.

I’m typing this article in the Cyber Cafe, a number of stands with numerous laptops set up for attendees to use between talks and strolls through the Solutions Pavilion (Exhibit Hall). The EMC sysadmins have done a great job setting them up, with easy access to web browsers. They told me, however, that some will unplug them so that they can plug in their own laptops to charge them. Bad idea. The batteries have been removed from these laptops — I’m told they tend to grow legs and walk away — and as soon as they are unplugged, they shut down.

Speaking of the Pavilion, I spent some time speaking to a variety of exhibitors today. Not only are there “the usual suspects” but as in years past, some competitors on the floor as well, showing the openness of the show. Here’s what caught my eye and ear:

• Intel SS4200-E

With a name that rolls off the tongue, this is the Intel version of the product I mentioned in my previous post yesterday that Dave Donatelli referenced as the perfect graduation present — a sub-$500 external Network Attached Storage (NAS) device for consumers, that leverages EMC’s LifeLine software. The demo is a device that takes 1-4 internal drives (sold separately) that can provide RAID protection as well as a variety of media services. For example the device can speak to an Xbox as a bridge, display movies to a widescreen TV… display photos to a digital picture frame… provide web-accessible photos to a remote device like an iPhone… play MP3s through an iTunes server… etc.

• Iomega

While slightly later to market, and with the intention of addressing a slightly different market than Intel, Iomega — currently being acquired by EMC — also previewed their LifeLine-based offering. It will be available in different configurations than the Intel offering, but with all the same capabilities. This is one to keep an eye out for.

• Retrospect

Acquired years ago by EMC as part of the Dantz acquisition, this well respected consumer and small business backup solution was, 20 years ago, the only 3rd party backup product for the Macintosh. This is features as part of LifeLine, and new features and capabilities are coming that will make this a compelling offering for both local and cloud-based backup

• Mozy

Speaking of cloud-based backup, this popular technology, acquired last year by EMC, allows consumers and small businesses to have SAAS (Software As A Service) backup for pennies a day. An application on a Mac or PC backups files over the Internet in encrypted form, initially as a full backup, then block-level incrementals thereafter. Offsite backup without having to move backup media offsite.

• 3D or Data De-Duplication

Mark Twomey, also known as Storagezilla, was in the EMC booth explaining the new data de-duplication capabilities of the EMC Disk Libraries. Mark knows everyone.

I’ve reported more details via Twitter. These can be found either at:

• http://twitter.com/billpetro and search on the tag “#emcworld”

• http://twemes.com/emcworld and search on author “billpetro”

Thanks for coming along.

BillPetro.com

EMC WORLD: DAY 1 RECAP

A full and rich day in the “city by the sand” Las Vegas. I attended a variety of talks during the day, but the best was:

• Virtualization Technology and Directions offered by David Black, PhD of EMC. He covered a discussion of a variety of virtualization techniques, but spent most of his time talking about virtualizing servers and virtualizing storage. There was much discussion of VMware technologies, but also detailed discussion of Storage Area Network (SAN) virtualization using EMC Invista and File (NAS) virtualization with EMC Rainfinity. Full marks.

The keynotes were huge, the plenary talks in the huge hall at Mandalay Bay Conference Center. EMC’s President, CEO and Chairman Joe Tucci kicked it off with a fascinating set of information. This year’s EMC World has:

• 9300 attendees
• 56% of them are new this year
• 556 sessions

Further, there are about 120 exhibitors here this year. And a tour of the Exhibit Floor seemed to confirm this. It was packed with Partners and people.

Joe announced right off the top EMC’s interest in helping with the China earthquake relief effort by the use of matching gifts. Head to the Cyber Cafe.

Joe’s theme was the phenomenal growth in online information, where it comes from and how it’s going to be stored, protected, managed and wrapped in intelligence.

How much information are we talking about?

• 173 Exabytes of information, 1773 Exabytes in 5 years. 10X growth, or 60% Compounded Annual Growth Rate for storage on disk arrays.

Where will this new data come from? IDC has done research on this. By 2010:

• 70% will come from individual creation

• 85% will become the responsibility of organizations: YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Google

Digital Footprint Calculator: Track “Your Star” in the digital universe.

Further, IDC has developed a Personal Digital Footprint Calculator. Using Joe as an example of how many photos he creates, music he gets, etc., they calculated he uses about 4GB of data daily. If he’s typical, multiplying his number by the number of attendees at EMC World:

• 4GB/day x 9K attendees = 35TB/day

To this end, Joe announced a new division at EMC responsible for Cloud Computing Services and Infrastructure. All to address what he calls:

• Information Centric Computing

Howard Elias, EMC President of Global Services and Resource Management Software picked up this theme and talked about:

• Liquid Computing requires Liquid IT Management

He spent time discussing how the new rules of computing require new ways of managing. He mentioned EMC Smarts “model based” management, as well as Voyance, a relatively recent EMC acquisition.

Dave Donatelli, President of EMC’s Storage Division wrapped up the morning keynotes.

He reminded us that this is graduation season, and a great gift would be EMC’s:

• $500 personal storage platform, that can be backed up via Software As A Service (SAAS) Mozy.

He also announced de-duplication in the new:

• LAN Backup to Disk (B2d) and Disk Library

Real-time updates

I’ve reported more details via Twitter. These can be found either at:

• http://twitter.com/billpetro and search on the tag “#emcworld”

• http://twemes.com/emcworld and search on author “billpetro”

Thanks for coming along.

BillPetro.com