Storage Effect

Entries tagged as ‘Moshe Yanai’

IBM slowly but surely launches XIV

August 19, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Don’t expect “start-up” behavior from the industry’s most mature storage company

 

There’s been lots of grousing about IBM’s stealth launch of their first XIV-based product last week.  Is it really that surprising?  A storage technology machine the size of IBM’s takes a few gear shifts to get up to full speed with even the newest technology. 

While IBM is taking it slow, there’s no reason to doubt their commitment to change in storage technology.  XIV is no doubt an innovative addition to IBM’s portfolio.  Given time, I’m sure we’ll see more and more to like from Nextra and IBM.  

Once they get to about third gear, watch out.

Categories: Products · Storage Systems
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XIV in detail

August 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Everything you wanted to know about XIV, but not from IBM

Blocks and Files has done an outstanding job of summarizing XIV’s products – both today and tomorrow.  If you want a detailed third-party view of this up-and-coming IBM technology, dive in here:

XIV Storage System Release 1

XIV Storage System Release 2

XIV Storage System – How it Works

Thanks Chris Mellor!

Categories: Products · Storage Systems
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Interview with ESG analyst Mark Peters

May 8, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Enterprise Strategy Group’s Mark Peters and I sat down in Minneapolis today and talked shop.  Besides having a cool Oxford-trained English accent, his views on the storage landscape rang true to me:

  • The storage system market is out of balance right now, with several “big boys” (IBM, EMC et al) and dozens of “little guys” playing in the same sandbox. 
  • This is not sustainable, and causing the industry mainstays to make unusually bold moves (witness EMC’s SSD and Mozy forays and IBM’s Diligent and XIV acquisitions)
  • Xiotech and Atrato are exciting because they are promising clear, core benefits.   “Do you want maintenance-free storage, or storage that requires service visits/costs/risks?”
  • Xiotech and Compellent are both based in Minnesota with common management roots, but seem to have staked out two distinct storage solution spaces.  More on this in another post.
  • “Green” is overhyped.  Mostly storage companies mean “energy efficient”, and would do well to be clearer on this. 

Keep your eyes peeled for a new blog from Mark.  Not too surprising given ESG’s success with Steve’s IT Rants blog.  I hope Mark dives in.  His unique perspective would benefit many.

Categories: Industry trends · Storage Systems
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IBM may have pulled the trigger on Diligent

April 18, 2008 · 1 Comment

Potential risk for IBM competitors currently using Diligent’s product

Byte and Switch  is referencing Israeli media reports that IBM has acquired Diligent for $200M.  The deal’s been talked about in the blogosphere, including here, for a few weeks now. 

Deduplication is an important enabling technology for the data center. Diligent, EMC’s former Israeli lab, is a dedupe leader.  It’s not clear what this will mean for IBM competitors HDS, Sun and Overland that are licensing Diligent’s technology today.

There may be a bit of scrambling as the music stops on the dedupe round of techno musical chairs.

Categories: Company Profiles · Datacenter · Industry trends
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IBM sniffing around Diligent

March 21, 2008 · 2 Comments

Moshe Yanai and connection makes this intriguing

diligent_logo.jpg

Byte and Switch says IBM is looking at acquiring Diligent, which includes what was EMC’s Israeli lab.  The interesting connection is Moshe Yanai, who engineered the recent purchase of Israeli-based XIV a few months ago.

An added incentive for IBM is that they have been relatively quiet about deduplication, which is Diligent’s forte.

Update:  Storagezilla adds some color on Diligent, EMC and IBM.

Categories: Company Profiles · Datacenter
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XIV + IBM = breakout technology

January 15, 2008 · 2 Comments

A perfect storm for IBM in the enterprise storage space? 

nextra_ovw.jpg

There are a lot of startups in the storage world with mostly excellent technology, all struggling to break out.  IBM may have scored a coup with its acquisition of XIV by providing the business scale and market reach to propel Nextra into mainstream adoption. 

IBM’s marketing plus XIV’s technology, coupled with the fact that IBM doesn’t have EMC’s Symmetrix business to cannibalize, creates a market-changing Pivotal Moment in the enterprise storage space.  If IBM can move fast, they can achieve the market success in this segment that all of those startups mostly just gret to dream about.

Read what Robin Harris has to say on this.

Categories: Industry trends · Products · Storage Systems
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IBM buys into massively parallel storage

January 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment

IBM acquires XIV: storage technology for a Web 2.0 world 

Moshe Yanai, the man who invented the Symmetrix (and therefore EMC) decades ago, has created a game-changing storage solution at XIV, his 5 year-old  startup.  IBM thinks so too, it seems. They announced today that they had acquired the company.

Enterprise Strategy Group was big on XIV even before IBM announced they would acquire them.  Who couldn’t like rebuilding a 1 TB drive in less than 30 minutes?  An innovative massively parallel storage architecture creates all kinds of rule-busting capabilities (near-infinite scalability, high performance with SATA drives) that are only available today in massive, custom-built internet data centers.

Categories: Business Solutions · Company Profiles · Datacenter · Industry trends
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