The Next Logical Step
Welcome to my last blog as the “Storage Marketing Guy” at Sun. Just over two years after coming with the StorageTek team to Sun, I am heading to a role in the Strategic Alliances and Licensing team. I am really excited by the opportunity and will blog more about it when I know which way is up!
For the Storage team there is also change.
David Kenyon will be taking over as VP of Storage Marketing at Sun. David was with us at StorageTek and has been running the products management and business operations team for a while. Perfect guy for the job.
It was also announced today that we are combining the Storage team into the Systems team. Or, more realistically, we're combining the Server team and the Storage team into a Systems team. It may sound like semantics, but it's really not. If you look around at all the major “systems” companies you find that the server team and the storage team are always under the same umbrella organization. Given that Sun's focus is to be a Systems company, probably a higher corporate priority for Sun than any of the other major “systems” companies, that's a pretty good place to be. And it will also create some synergies.
Now as I learned through the STK acquisition – synergies can go both ways. While many people think they mean lay-offs, in the Sun-STK action they actually meant revenue and development benefits. Let me give you two examples:
- The Sun StorageTek VTL-V solution runs on a Sun X4500 (aka Thumper), running Solaris with ZFS. It is a Virtual Tape Library that can backup Windows, Linux, HP-UX, AIX and Solaris - it just happens to use Solaris as its OS. In STK days we would have had to license, buy, rent or invent nearly all of that for ourselves. Clearly the StorageTek solutions are better as part of Sun.
- The storage market is changing rapidly – files over block, iSCSI, SAS, Objects, Integrated Search, File Systems – I could go on. More and more these sound like a cross between an OS, a server and a storage device. They are and there is no point developing the same thing twice.
So, it is clear to me this is good for Sun, but is it good for our customers?
When I talk to customers they really all ask for the same things: quality products that deliver high value functions at a low cost and with ever improving 'eco' characteristics. I think the integrated development team will accelerate us along that path and will therefore deliver what the customers want.
Here's how:
- quality products require good design, good development and good test. Each of these areas is better off with a larger 'talent pool' than a smaller one. The Sun StorageTek solutions will get better as we share more with the Systems team. From ASIC design to physical packaging – there is much that can get better.
- high value function is more and more being delivered as part of an OS. OK, it may be delivered as a appliance but it is function that's going into the OS or the file system. Think of the VTL-V examples and what ZFS can do to offer a RAID capability without the need for the hardware and with no real performance impact.
- lower cost can come from common components, shared resources and volume. All come with the larger group.
- Eco – if you saw my blog of a couple of weeks ago, you will know that our 'Systems-like' approach is one of the key elements that differentiates the Sun Storage Eco story – so we have more to build off.
I think the other interesting aspect of this, starting to think about my new role, is to ask the “off platform question”.
What happens to Sun Storage sales to the customers that don't connect to Solaris?
The obvious answer is that we will of course continue to sell tape and disk to the those customers – all of whom will get better solutions and faster in this new world. But let's explore what “off platform” means in at Sun today.
At Sun we can help you with your Solaris needs, but we can also help you with you Linux needs and now we can help you with you Windows needs – so there is a lot of stuff that's not off platform anymore! Moreover, with millions of Solaris licenses being deployed on x86 on HP, DELL and IBM servers and partners like IBM committing to Solaris in public – what is the “platform” we're talking about? A chip or an operating system? It's a different world out there and our solutions and organizations need to change to match them.
But what if our customer's platform is an IBM mainframe?
No problem – happy to do business with you. Did we mention that we have over 80% share in the market for tape libraries over 1000 slots (i.e., tapes)? Did we tell you we have a new mainframe mid-range library coming next year? What about two new tape drives in next 6 moths? An update to our encryption solution just weeks away? The new ST9990V and ST9985V mainframe disk solutions already announced? Sounds like a pretty healthy portfolio to me and it is only getting better. Oh, we will use Solaris to help us make it even better. Should that worry our customers? No, if IBM's VTS can run AIX then we can use Solaris. I know which I would prefer!
So will customers worry? Of course, none of us likes changes within our suppliers – it has the potential to add risk. But in the long run I believe this move actually could do the opposite. It could add longevity and certainty where some would say it has been missing.
Good luck to my friends and colleagues in the storage world. I think the best is yet to come.
To my mainframe friends let me just say this, from me, for the moment, z_eod.
Posted at 01:06PM Oct 01, 2007 by Nigel Dessau in Sun Storage | Comments[1]